When it was first introduced into the market, the advertisers promoted their products through celebrity endorsements with Sir Walter Raleigh and Philip of Spain working tirelessly to popularise smoking and enhance their personal profits. Although many attempts were made to ban the use of tobacco in various countries around the world, we had to wait until the last century for real progress to be made. The decision whether to use any drug is always a balancing of the benefits against the costs. In the case of tobacco, smoking releases a batch of chemicals producing a pleasurable response sufficiently strong to be addictive. People are hooked quite quickly and find the unpleasantness of the withdrawal symptoms a deterrent to quitting. But, despite the best efforts of the tobacco industry to hide the medical evidence, we now understand the physical dangers of smoking. The link with cancer and heart disease is undeniable. This information now deters many young people from starting to smoke and encourages existing smokers to endure the withdrawal symptoms to quit. Curiously, less is made of the link between smoking and erectile dysfunction. Perhaps it is considered too personal an attack on lifestyle choices. Just as some will resist calls to moderate the amount of alcohol drunk despite the risk of liver disease, others will deny the need to quit smoking unless their lives are directly at risk.

There are a number of different physical reactions to smoking nicotine that are important in this context. The first is a general contraction of the blood vessels which causes an increase in blood pressure as the heart is pushed to pump harder to maintain the circulation. Over time, the nicotine encourages arteriosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries in the contracted state. In research published by the American Journal of Epidemiology, 70% of all cases of arteriosclerosis is caused by heavy smoking. The first symptoms of this appear in the smaller arteries in the hands, feet and penis. You may feel the cold more and erectile dysfunction will become an increasingly obvious problem. Recent research from China shows that men who have smoked are 60% more likely to experience erectile dysfunction than men who have never smoked. If you persist in smoking, there can be damage to the sperm. In the long term, complete impotence and infertility is achieved. As an aside, it is worth mentioning that exactly the same result is achieved when you smoke cannabis.

The moral of this story should be obvious. Ignoring the risks of cancer and heart disease, maintaining and active sex life and the ability to have children demand you quit smoking. Quitting early will prevent any further reduction in the quality of your erections. If you cannot quit, cialis will help you maintain hard erections in the first stage as you develop arteriosclerosis. The drug triggers the dilation of the arteries supplying blood into your penis. But there will come a point when the arteries harden to such a degree that cialis stops working effectively. Now it’s only a matter of time before you lose the power to get an erection altogether. This is a direct threat to what it means to be a man. Once the first symptoms of erectile dysfunction appear, you should quit. This should not be a matter for debate. You should just quit.